17JUN

One ship or five? Hormuz counts split

2 min read

10:21UTC

S&P Global logged a single vessel through Hormuz on 16 August and called it a record low. Kpler counted five the same day, and only one of the two has published what it counts.

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Key takeaway

Two providers gave the same day counts of one and five; only Kpler discloses its universe.

S&P Global Commodity Insights counted one vessel crossing the Strait of Hormuz on 16 August, described the figure as a record low, and put the previous day at eight⁠¹. Our own record already carried a different number for that date. Kpler, which tracks commodity vessels, meaning tankers and bulk carriers rather than all shipping, counted five crossings in the same water on the same day.

Kpler's later readings continue the series. It put 18 August at six crossings, against nine on 17 August and a ten-day daily average of eleven⁠². That is 45 per cent below its own average, an arithmetic step we have taken on Kpler's two published figures rather than a percentage Kpler states.

One and five are not the same count of the same strait on the same day. The S&P Global page would not open on four separate fetch routes, so the vessel universe behind its figure cannot be laid against Kpler's. Of the names attached to Hormuz numbers this week, only Kpler has published what it counts. Windward is not a third tally at all: it measures how many ships have stopped transmitting, which is the mechanism rather than the count.

The divergence has a precedent two months old. US Central Command (CENTCOM, the American military command covering the Middle East) counted 55 merchant ships through the strait on 22 June against Kpler's 12, a 43-ship gap our energy desk traced to vessels hugging the Omani shoreline with their transponders switched off. June's version sat between a navy and a commercial tracker, an easy difference to explain away. This week's sits between two commercial providers selling to the same customers.

A war-risk underwriter prices a Hormuz voyage against the number of movements that actually occur. Hand that underwriter two incompatible denominators and the premium drifts towards the worst plausible reading rather than the measured one. The charterer pays that difference, and pays it whether the true figure is one ship or five.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Companies that track ships crossing the strait of Hormuz publish daily counts so traders and insurers can judge how risky the route is. On 16 August, S&P Global Commodity Insights said only one ship crossed, calling it a record low. But another firm's count for the same day gave a different number, and neither company explains exactly how it counts ships or which vessels it includes. That disagreement matters because these counts get used to set the cost of shipping and insuring cargo through the strait. If the real number is unclear, nobody outside the tracking firms can be certain how dangerous the route currently is.

Deep Analysis

Root Causes

Commodity data providers compete commercially on the accuracy of their vessel counts, which gives each an incentive to keep its underlying methodology proprietary rather than publish it for cross-checking. That commercial secrecy is what makes today's divergence between S&P Global's figure and the existing commodity-vessel count for 16 August unresolvable from public information.

Vessels that go AIS-dark, turning off their tracking transponders, are invisible to any counting method built on that signal , so every tracker's number understates true crossings by an amount neither firm can quantify.

What could happen next?

Risk
Traders and insurers who rely on a single provider's Hormuz transit count risk misjudging how open the strait actually is, since S&P Global's figure and the existing commodity-vessel count for 16 August do not agree.

Sources:S&P Global Commodity Insights·S&P Global Commodity Insights

Mentions:S&P Global Platts →Strait of Hormuz →Windward →Kpler →Oman →CENTCOM (US Central Command) →

First Reported In

Update #172 · The strait nobody can count, insure or pay

S&P Global Commodity Insights· 19 Aug 2026

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Causes and effects

Caused by

Five ships crossed Hormuz in a day

S&P Global's one-ship count for 16 August diverges from the commodity-vessel count already reported for that date.

Occurred 16 Aug 2026

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This Event

One ship or five? Hormuz counts split

Underwriters, charterers and governments are all pricing a chokepoint whose traffic nobody can independently verify.

Led to

Four Hormuz figures that do not agree

Commercial trackers already disagreed on Hormuz transit counts before Wright and Madani's figures diverged.

Occurred 1 Sept 2026

Read story →

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